János Sugár on Adolf Fényes Hall, his film Persian Walk, and his exhibition “Exhibition Scenery” (1999)
Self-financed exhibition by György Jovánovics and István Nádler
As the BBS (Béla Balázs Studio) accepted a film plan of mine in 1984, the producer applied to get Adolf Fényes Hall as a venue. That is, one year after I finished with the Academy of Fine Arts (to be more exact, they kicked me out), I got Adolf Fényes Hall—which I had always thought highly of—for three days to shoot a film. As the exhibition hall was an exhibition hall in the film too, I could get things done on the film’s budget. They prepared the whole exhibition based on my plans. We finished shooting that five-minute-long scene within half an hour, and I had an exhibition for three days, under ideal circumstances, at a venue I could not have dreamed of. I thought it was the most beautiful gallery in the city, and among the best ones: not too big and not too small, with a huge courtyard on the first floor. Memorable exhibitions had taken place there—it is a place where the spirit and context of former exhibitions live on. Unfortunately, the place has been given to the Artists’ Association, and nothing has happened in it since then; moreover, they have given it a new and quite boorish name: the Arcade Gallery. As far as I know, Adolf Fényes was an art collector and a Sunday painter. The opening took place in February 1985. The speech was made by Anikó Szőke: this was her first (!) opening of an exhibition. She made a reference to an earlier work by Jovánovics at my request—one of my favorites, an astonishing work that had been exhibited in Adolf Fényes Hall.